Senor Sammy Ibarra, who teaches Spanish II, is one of the new faculty members at LCM this year, but he is no stranger to the district.

“I am an LCM alumni, so these are my old stomping grounds,” Ibarra said.

According to Ibarra, one of the most challenging parts of being a first year teacher is putting in grades. However, he said he enjoys the diversity of his students and the way each class has a different atmosphere. Teaching can be a challenging career in itself, especially for new teachers. COVID-19 has also taken teaching challenges to a new level.

“Adapting to Teams and in-person teaching my first year is a little difficult to be honest,” Ibarra said.

Ibarra has spoken Spanish since he was a child, but he prefers English. It was not until high school that he began to speak Spanish regularly. He hopes to encourage his students to continue with Spanish after his class by showing them how they can use it after high school.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily important for students to learn Spanish specifically, but another foreign language or something of that sort,” Ibarra said. “I decided to teach Spanish because I knew I could make it really fun as opposed to a core class.”

As a student, Ibarra loved how much of an impact his own good teachers made on him and others. He wanted to become a teacher so he could have the same kind of impact on his own students.